Sure, it’s increasingly true that 50 is the new 40 (or 60 is the new 50, if that applies). But when it comes to age requirements for public safety officials, including members of the Boston Police Department, age requirements do have some rational basis.

No doubt Edward Grace, a 50-year-old marathoner from Charlestown and head of the public safety committee for the Charlestown Neighborhood Council, is — like many of his generation — defying the odds. Currently a salesman for Anheuser-Busch and a member of South Boston’s L Street Running Club, Grace has tried a number of times to join the Boston Police Department.

Now he wants another shot, even though he’s 10 years over the maximum age limit and astonishingly City Council President Stephen J. Murphy, Councilor Sal LaMattina and state Rep. Eugene Flaherty (D-Chelsea) are all willing to pull legal strings to give it to him. And that’s really the ?appalling part of this.

No one, repeat, no one should be allowed to use the political process to do an end run around the carefully crafted rules of the game. Really now, is Grace the only fit and trim 50-year-old who would like a shot at being a cop? Probably not. And it’s all rather nice that his grandfather was a member of the force back in the day, but sorry that counts for precious little at a time when the department needs to be diversifying its workforce — not going back to the future.

“This kid just wants to be a cop,” Murphy told the Herald — thereby truly redefining “kid” in the process. “He’s wanted to be a cop for 30 years. And the system has bucked him.”

The system isn’t perfect. That’s for sure. But they don’t call it merit-based for nothing.

And the day politicians feel compelled to muck around with it is the day those pols — all of them — should themselves be looking for another form of employment.